The present invention relates to information technology for television and Internet based electronic commerce.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,532,735 describes a technique for interactive television (video-on-demand) system wherein viewers are allowed to select a desired amount of advertisements and accordingly receive a discount for ordered entertainment programs: no discount with no advertisements, some discount with moderate amount of advertisements and biggest discount with a lot of advertisements. PointCast Inc., Cupertino Calif., has developed a screen saver application (a program that takes over control of the screen when computer idles) that delivers news headlines and commercials from Web sites to on-line computer users. U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,195 discloses a system for providing advertising information for on-line PC users during waiting time in on-line activities. U.S. Pat. No. 5,276,866 describes an information retrieval system based on two different communication mediums: an automated touch tone telephone service and interactive video. U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,542 discloses a system which uses a set-top cable box associated with a customer's television set for interactive services: movie-on-demand, shop at home and others.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,098 describes a system for distributing commercials to individually addressable subscriber terminal on a network. Commercial messages to be distributed over the network contain embedded information identifying categories of recipients for each message. A server, located on the network, provides each commercial with addresses of terminals to which the commercial is to be distributed. The addresses are selected by the server based on demographic and other information related to the households of subscribers. The commercial is received by an addressable set-top box and displayed on TV screen.
The common feature of referred above prior art is advertising via addressable media. Thus cited U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,098 discloses, in fact, an electronic version of a technique widely used in direct mail promotion. Meanwhile nonaddressable one-way broadcast and two-way addressable service are different and equally important parts of any communication infrastructure. On one side we see newspapers, radio and television, on other--mail, telephone and video conferencing. This two types of communications are fundamentally different not as much in technology as in domain. While nonaddressable broadcast media dominates in delivery of news, entertainment and advertisement, two-way addressable media supports personal communications and teletransactions. One watches a commercial on TV and then places an order by phone, not the other way around. Fortunately, advertising by mail and phone is typically unsuccessful, otherwise we would have a problem looking for bills lost in a pile of junk mail, and phone wouldn't give us a break. The more advanced technology is used for addressable advertising the more annoying the advertising is. That is why the Internet community hates junk e-mail. Switching media domains, whatever innovative it seems to be in theory, looks pretty much as media misuse and abuse in practice.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,534,911 by the same applicant describes an apparatus for providing a customer of a television system with virtual personal channel that being selected delivers television programs of the most personal interest no matter on which channel and at what time the programs are physically transmitted. In this application, the technology of virtual personal channel is further developed to provide a new type of television advertising referred herein as commercial-on-demand, which, in turn, is incorporated with the Internet to facilitate a highly automated home shopping system referred herein as virtual personal store.
Commercial-on-demand (COD) is a civilized alternative of annoying junk mail and solicitation by phone. Advertising a a product, COD goes only to those recipients, TV viewers and PC users, who currently indicate an interest in that kind of product, and does not bother all others. Unlike junk e-mail, COD does not clog the Internet bypassing it via nonaddressable broadcast TV cannels--cable, satellite and so on. Having power of multimedia presentation COD is affordable because it doesn't need to be inserted in a prime-time popular program: computers automatically pick it up from any channel at any transmission time. Just compare: one-page advertisement in a popular magazine may cost $100,000 and even more; one TV channel can transfer 100,000 pages per hour, 2.5 million pages per day.
Connected to both a TV system and the Internet, recipient's computer, which is a PC or a computer built in a set-top cable box, facilitates home shopping via a system reffered herein as virtual personal store (VPS). VPS exposes products and services of the most personal interest because all of them are brought by CODs. If recipient decides to place an order, the computer automatically composes the order and sends it through the Internet thereby providing shopping in easy "point, click and have it" manner. Unlike advertising, placing orders via telephone or the Internet does not bother anybody--advertisers gladly accept them.
Ordered products are physically delivered by U.S. mail or UPS, or other similar service. Products of informational rather than physical nature, such as newspapers, magazines, books, music, video and computer software, can be delivered virtually (electronically) via Internet. In fact, the Internet becomes a major medium for software distribution. However newspapers' delivery would clog the addressable network because of a large amount of digital information distributed simultaneously to a large number of recipients. This application discloses an electronic products' distribution to authorized recipients via television lines using the Internet for authorization only. The system for virtual products' delivery is different from and more efficient than "pay-per-view" system currently used in entertainment television. Digital info products are not supposed to be viewed, listened or read when delivered, so they are transmitted as fast as possible. Moreover, the transmission itself can happen at any time including late night, early morning and work hours, not only at expensive "prime time" convenient for viewers. Recipient's computer automatically picks up a product from any channel at any time as determined by time/channel data included in authorization message for that product. One TV channel during 1.5 hour can transmit one pay-per-view movie or 500 different titles of books. And because there are only 4 hours a day for efficient sale of pay-per-view movies and all 24 hours for virtual delivery, the ratio is really not 1:500 but 1:3000.
A number of systems and products providing TV viewers with Internet services have been recently announced. Philips Electronics and Sony Corp. are marketing WebTV set-top box based on technology developed by WebTV Network Inc., Palo Alto, Calif. Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp Electronics announced Internet TV based on Net Front software from Access Co, Tokyo. Zenith Electronics Corp., Glenview, Ill., presents Net Vision system based on an appliance from Diba Inc., Menlo Park, Calif. While those technologies are very important for implementation of current invention, functionally they are different: they provide TV viewers with well known Internet services such as e-mail, browsing Web sites and so on, but not with commercial-on-demand, virtual personal store and virtual delivery. Moreover, those systems make no use of one-way nonaddressable television lines, they are using only TV set screen as a computer monitor.